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Paterno, Domenica R.
The True Lion King of Africa; The Epic History of
Sundiata, King of Old Mali.
18 Nov 94
10p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the
National Council of Teachers of English (84th,
Orlando, FL, November 16-21, 1994).
Viewpoints (Opinion/Position Papers, Essays, etc.)
(120)
Speeches/Conference Papers (150)
Historical Materials (060)
MF01/PC01 Plus Postage.
*African Culture; African History; *African
Literature; Animation; *Childrens Literature;
Elementary Education; Epics; Film Criticism;
*Interdisciplinary Approach; *Literature
Appreciation; *Popular Culture
Cultural Sensitivity; *Lion King (The); Mali; Walt
Disney Studios
ABSTRACT
David Wisniewski's 1992 picture book version of the
African epic of "Sundiata, Lion King of Mali" and the actual
historical account of the 13th century Lion King, Sundiata, are both
badly served by Disney's "The Lion King." Disney has been praised for
using African animals as story characters; for using the African
landscape as a story setting; for using African artwork as design
motifs; and for using African-American actors as the voices for the
film characters. If the film succeeds in having African culture
accepted by people usually resistant to recognizing any other culture
but their own, then it deserves to be noted for this small breach in
the rcial divide. Nevertheless, in the larger sense, the film
diminishes the culturally rich heritage of history and story from
which it derives. Sundiata was the 12th son of a king of Mali, and he
was viewed by the king's "griot" as destined for greatness. He grew
to manhood in exile, but he returned to fight the evil forces of his
brother and return the kingdom to its rightful sovereignty. The film
converts the real hero's private pain and struggle against truly
wrenching physical and political disabilities into a screen situation
of sentimental, tearjerker shallowness. An interdisciplinary approach
would allow English and social studies teachers to present the epic
from a historical and literary perspective. Study of African history
texts may be augmented with research in encyclopedias under such
entries as Sundiata, Sumanguru, and Mali as beginning leads. (TB)
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The Truc Lion King of Africa:
The Epic History of Sundiata, King of Old Mali
Presentation
National Council of Teachers of English
84th Annual Convention
Orlando, Horida
18th November 1994
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
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Speaker
Domenica R. Paterno, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in English Education
Lehman College of the City University of New York
Department of Secondary Education
250 Bedford Park Boulevard West
Bronx, New York 10468
(1) 718 960-7896
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Listen to me, children of the Bright Country,
and hear the great deeds of ages past.
The words I speak are those of my father
and his father before him,
pure and full of truth.
For we are griots.
Centuries of law and learning reside within our minds.
Thus we serve kings with the wisdom of history,
bringing to life the lessons of the past
so that the future may flourish.
Listen, then, to the story of Sundiata, the Lion King,
who overcame all things to waik with greatness.
Thus begins David Wisniewski's 1992 version of the African epic of the
Sundiata, Lion King of Mali. In that opening we may discern the openings of
other epics:
Of Gilgainesh:
'The one who saw the abyss I will make the land know; of him who knew all, let me
tell the whole story ... [of] the lord of wisdom, he who knew everything, Gilgamesh,
who saw things secret, . .. traveled the road exhausted, in pain, and cut his works into
a stone tablet."
Of The lliad:
"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus / and its devastation, which put
pains thousandfold upon the Achaians, / hurled in their multitudes to the house of
Hades ..."
Of The Aeneid:
'This is a tale of arms and of a man. Fated to be an exile, he was the first to sail from
the land of Troy and reach Italy, at its Lavinian shore.
And of Beowulf:
"Hear! We know of the bygone glory of the Danish kings, and the heroic exploits of
those princes."
But the hero's tale told in the Sundiata, although having elements
which are universal to the genre, has roots which are uniquely and
exclusively African. The epic is based on the life of a true African king who,
in the thirteenth century, forged an empire in West Africa extending from
the Atlantic coast eastward into the present-day countries of Gambia, Guinea,
Sundiato *
raterno *
1
Senegal and Mali. The tale is addressed to the descendants of that ancient
country, Mali, by the "griot", the traditional African storytelling sage, the oral
historian, the law-keeper, and the memory-keeper of his people. And the
listeners are addressed as the "children" of that "Bright Country": as the
descendants of a heritage bright with courageous deeds and cultural
accomplishments, and rich in the treasures of real gold (from Malinke
mines), enlightened leaders and ancient wisdom.
The historical facts are these: In the early twelve-hundreds, the subSaharan kingdom of Sosso (Ghana) was ruled by the powerful Sumanguru.
In his attempt to conquer the Malinke state of Kangaba, Sumanguru killed
eleven princes of the royal Keita family, sparing only the young and sickly
son, Sundiata. The boy was thought to be so close to death that he posed no
threat to Sumanguru's plans for conquest. Sundiata went into exile. He
formed a private army and stayed close to his people. He forged alliances
with rulers of other West African states. In 1235 he encountered and defeated
Sumanguru at the battle of Kirina. In 1240 he seized the capital of Ghana and
destroyed all vestiges of Sumanguru's former power. By acquiring the
goldmine fields at Wangara, and by establishing his capital at Niani, a trading
crossroads, Sundiata was able to bring peace, sovereignty and prosperity to his
West African kingdom of Kangaba. Upon this foundation the empire of Mali
flourished for fifteen hundred years, reaching its peak in the fourteenth
century when it became the center of learning, law and commerce for the
entire West African Sudan.
David Wisniewski's picture book version is based upon the oral telling
by the Keita clan griot, Marnoudou Kouyate, as written down by Djibril Tansir
Niane, and as translated from the original Malinke by G. D. Pickett. In both
Sundiata
Paterno *
2
his words and pictures Wisniewski follows the original griot oral tradition of
telling truth through story: he enfuses historical fact with fictive devices.
Thus his vision is at once historically authentic and literarily imagined.
Magic and sorcery embellish incidents from the factual record. Characters
hold not the complexity and density of historical figures, but the
monumental simplicity of story villains and heroes. And the action, plotted
more as story than as chronicie account, swiftly moves the hero from private
weakness to public power, while providing him with only enough challenge
to make the final victory valiantly worthy. The punishment of the evildoer
and the defeat of evil, the triumph of the hero and the flourishing of the good
those perennial themes of literature-- are here captured by Wisnieswski in a
modern version of an historical narrative eight hundred years old.
Sundiata, according to the recitation of the Keita griot, was born the
twelfth son of Maghan Kon Fatta, king of Mali. His mother, Sogolon, was a
maiden "hunchbacked and ill-favored". Yet it was said that she possessed the
strong and courageous spirit of the buffalo. On the advice of his griot, King
Maghan married Sogolon, hoping to produce a son who combined his spirit
of the lion with hers of the buffalo.
But the new prince, Sundiata, though blessed by the spirits of buffalo and lion, proved
unable to speak or walk.... For seven years Sogolon tried in vain to heal her son with
potions and herbs. Sundiata dragged himself through the palace, ignored by some,
ridiculed by others.
Although his mother was heartbroken and his father despaired,
Sundiata was viewed by the king's griot as being destined for greatness.
Upon King Maghan's death, his wishes to have Sundiata succeed him were
ignored. Maghan's first wife, Sassouma Berete, who hated and feared
Sundiata, saw that her own son was installed on the throne. As mother of
Sundiata * Paterm, *
the ruling king, Sassouma taunted Sogolon about her mute and crippled
child: "It would seem that a walking boy is better than a crawling lion."
Sundiata could not see his mother thus humiliated. He sent his faithful
griot, Balla Fasseke, for an iron rod. Driving the rod into the ground,
Sundiata grasped it and painfully raised himself to his knees. Then with
another great effort, Sundiata stood upright for the first time in his life. The
now bent rod fell away and Sundiata stood freely and strongly on his own
feet. Sassouma, fearing Sundiata's growing power, attempted to use
witchcraft to destroy him. But Sundiata's goodness defeated the woman's
wicked magic.
Then Sassouma banished Sundiata's friend and griot, Balla Fasseke, to
the court of Sasso, ruled by the evil sorcerer king, Sumanguru. Fearing
further harm to her family, Sogolon chose the road of exile for herself and
her family. As he grew to manhood in exile, in the kingdoms which took
him in, Sundiata was recognized as a courageous warrior and a wise leader.
He served the king of Mema so well that Sundiata was made heir to the
Mema throne. But Sundiata left Mema when the tyrant Sumanguru invaded
his homeland, Mali. The king and his evil mother, Sassouma, had fled; the
people were leaderless; and the Malinke seers prophesied that only Sundiata
could save his people and return the kingdom to its rightful sovereignty.
Sundiata gathered a great army from the kingdoms which had
supported him in exile. He encountered Sumanguru's forces on the plain of
Kirina. In the midst of the fray, Sundiata is united with his friend and griot,
Balla Fasseke. Banished to the Sasso court, the griot had learned
Sumanguru's tana, the secret charm which held the power to utterly destroy
the tyrant's might. Balla gave Sundiata the tana, a wooden arrow tipped with
Sum /iota *
Paterno *
4
sorcerer. Sumanguru, pursued by Sundiata and Balla, escaped to the slopes of
Mount Koulikoro where he sought safety in a stone cavern, only to become
one with the rock of the mountain, never to be seen again. His leaderless
army went down in defeat.
Sundiata returned in glory to Mali. "Hatred drove me from this land," he said,
"because of what I seemed to be: a crawling child, unworthy of respect and unfit to rule.
Mali has suffered great hardship as a result."
"Now I return as your king. Henceforth, none shall interfere with another's destiny.
You, your children, and your children's children shall find their appointed place
within this land forever."
This came to pass, and Sundiata, the Lion King, ruled the Bright Country for many
golden years.
I have presented both the historic and the literary versions of this
African hero tale because I seek to place the truth of history and epic as
necessary context for (if not argument against) the Disney animated film
rendition of the Lion King story which now pervades our (popular) culture.
My purpose is to restore the authenticity of the true Lion King, as historical
personage and as epic hero.
The Disney Studio has been praised for using African animals as story
characters; for using the African landscape as story setting, and African
artwork as design motifs. The film has also been lauded for using
AfroAmerican actors as the voices for several film characters. And if the film
succeeds, through its highly entertaining mode of presenting these African
elements, in having African culture accepted by people usually resistant to
recognizing any culture but their own-- then the film deserves to be noted for
this small breach in the racial divide.
But in the larger sense the film may be said to diminish the culturally
rich heritage of history and story from which it derives. The film replaces a
cuudiata
*
['Memo *
genuine African hero with an animated caricature of one. It converts the real
hero's private pain and struggle against truly wrenching physical and political
disabilities into a screen situation of sentimental, tear-jerker shallowness.
History's true account of the devastating battle at Kirina is reduced in its film
counterpart to a fast-action, special-effects romp. The acute vision of the griot,
who instructs in righteousness as he tells his tale, is replaced in the film by
the cute song lyrics advice of a pseudo sage. This preemption of the
magnificent original epic, carried down for eight.centuries through the skill
and memories of chanting griots should not prevail.
An interdisciplinary approach would allow English and social studies
teachers to present the epic from an historical and a literary perspective.
Study of African history texts may be augmented with research in junior and
senior encyclopedias under such entries as: Sundiata, Sumanguru, Mali and
Malinke, as beginning leads. Although at present no other junior version of
the Sundiata is in print but David Wisniewski's picture book version,
nevertheless libraries may have in their collections previously published
editions. Wisniewski's text and illustrations may be plumbed by middle and
high school students for their rich literary and historical allusions; primary
graders will enjoy them for their detailed storytelling qualities.
The literary definition of the epic may be applied to the Sundiata, since
it deals with a human, not a divine, protagonist, and since it recounts "heroic
deeds." It may then be compared with other epics in the canon, from
Gilgainesh, to Beowulf. Like Gilgamesh, who loses Enkidu, Sundiata suffers
the loss of his friend, Balla. Like Odysseus, he wanders in exile before being
able to return to his homeland. Like Beowulf, he slays those evildoers who
would bring devastation on his people. Like Aeneas he founds a country.
8
Stindititti * Paterno
What is unique to each epic is its cultural context. What is generic to
all epics is the story of the rise of humankind, told through the metaphors of
battle and journey, from the darkness of ignorance, weakness, enslavement
and despair into the brightness of wisdom, strength, liberation and hope. As
teachers we can present our students with no greater metaphor than that
which appears in the Sundiata: the story of a real man of Africa, born a
crippled mute, who conquered his physical disabilities to become a wise
warrior, an enlightened sovereign of his people.
In this day of drive-by shootings, the (Sundiata) epic teaches that torce
should be used only in the service of good. In this day of metal detectcrs in
the schools, the (Sundiata) epic teaches that the evildoer will be destroyed by
his own weapon of evil. In this day of racial, ethnic and class divisions, the
(Sundiata) epic teaches that a man may emerge from the lowliest of
circumstances to become a force for unification of all peoples.
'The case for literature,' wrote Denys Thompson, "is that it stands for
humanity at a time when the human values are not upheld, as they used to
be, by religion and the home, or even by education itself as a whole." Let us
as teachers of literature make the case for human values by telling the story of
humanity in all its rich diversity.
Sunditita
*
Paterno * 7
REFERENCES
,
Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali. Compiled and written by Djibril Tamsir
Niane. From the words of Djeli Mamoudou Kouyate, Griot of the
Keita Clan. Translated from the original Malinke by G. D. Pickett.
London, 1965.
Translated from the French by G. D. Pickett. Essex, England:
Longmans, 1986.
Sundiata: Lion King of Mali. Story and Pictures by David Wisniewski. New
York: Clarion Books, 1992.
Beowulf. A Prose Translation by David Wright. New York: Penguin Books,
1957.
Gilgamesh. Translated by John Gardner and John Maier. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1984.
The Iliad of Homer. Translated by Richard Lattimore. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1951.
Virgil: The Aeneid. Translated into Prose by W. F. Jackson Knight. New
York: Penguin Books, 1956.
Fleming, Margaret, Editor. Teaching the Epic. Urbana, Illinois: National
Council of Teachers of English, 1974.
Note: Although Fleming does not deal specifically with the Sundiata, her introductory
essay and the section on "National Epics" are unsurpassed as preparatory materials for
teaching this (or any) epic.
Vance, Sidney. "Contending with the Masculinist Traditions: Sundiata's
Sogolon and the Wife of Bath." In Global Perspectives on Teaching
Literature. Sandra Ward Lott, Maureen S. G. Hawkins, and Norman
McMillan, Editors. Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of
English, 1993. PP. 101-108.
Vance deals with teaching the original (G. D. l'ickett translation) Sundiata to college students.
Her feminist perspective of focusing study on the woman's strengths she discerns in Sundiata's
mother, Sc)gcilon, is also a valid approach for secondary students-- when (and if) an appropriate text
becomes available.
Note:
Thompson, Denys. Quoted in, The Uses of English. Herbert J. Muller. New
York: Hoit, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1967. P. 77.
10
Sundiata
*
Paterno * 8